Where were you when you heard the news of Saddam Hussein's capture? Or perhaps a more telling question is: What REM state were you in when the news broke Sunday at around 5 a.m. Eastern time? For print newspapers, the news caught them after deadline for their large Sunday morning edition, leaving news sites as the primary source for text stories while TV showed repeated video of a bedraggled Saddam undergoing a medical exam.

Rather than print extra editions, newspapers relied on their Web sites to get the news out to curious readers. Many top U.S. news sites reported increased traffic on Sunday, as they had to scramble to wake sleeping staff and get them in to post updates. (See below for a timeline showing how news sites updated and developed the story throughout the day and night.)

"I was at home asleep [when the news broke]," said Michael Sims, CBSNews.com's director of news and operations. "When the network got wind of what was going on, my producer in the newsroom gave me a call. Ever since 9/11, we've had what I would call a disaster plan in effect, where we have specific on-call people in every discipline -- design, editorial, technical, multimedia video. Within 45 minutes of getting the word this was happening, we had one person from every discipline in the office."

Not only did Sims have to rouse people out of bed early on a Sunday morning -- he also was fortunate to get them into the office before a major snowstorm hit New York City.

While Sunday print editions of The Washington Post and The New York Times had no mention of Saddam's capture, the continuous news desks of those papers helped churn out content online. Both those sites had only one person on the premises when the news broke, but they quickly brought in staff to make Sunday more like a bustling weekday at the office.

"As an organization, the Post has become very comfortable operating this way," said Don Marshall, communications director for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, via e-mail. "For instance, we had reporters, including ones in Iraq, calling directly to the Web news desk because they knew that it was too late for print. The continuous news desk folks were in immediately after the story broke, and they made certain that the full resources of the Post were going into the coverage we were putting on washingtonpost.com."

Meanwhile, the NYTimes.com continuous news desk was working with Times journalist Edward Wong in Baghdad via e-mail and phone, according to Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman for NYTimes.com.

Asked if this was another instance in which the New York Times' Web site had helped keep newspaper readers informed during a dead time in the print news cycle, Mohan said, "We don't really define it that way -- the emphasis here is on news rather than paper," she told me via e-mail. "Our readers access Times journalism via a number of platforms -- newspaper, Web site, e-mail, broadcast and wireless. So NYTimes.com's mission is to keep our readers informed, around the world, regardless of time of day or delivery platform. Yesterday we were just delivering the news."

Traffic spikes and solidity

But the folks at CNN didn't shy away from saying they broke the news on TV, and had the print newspapers behind the eight ball for 24 hours on a huge story.

"A lot of what had already been posted and presented online and on air by the end of the day wasn't going to be in the newspapers until they came out on Monday morning," said Mitch Gelman, senior vice president and executive producer of CNN.com. "By the time the papers came out announcing Saddam had been captured, we were reporting what Saddam said when he was being interrogated. The news cycle worked to our advantage. You hear sometimes that journalists write the first draft of history. In this case, it was the 24/7 news operations that presented the first draft of Saddam Hussein's capture."

While traffic at top sites was modestly up for a Sunday, these weren't anywhere near the Iraq wartime numbers or 9/11. MSNBC.com and CNN.com said they had twice the traffic of a normal Sunday. CBSNews.com had three times its normal weekend traffic, with four times the normal video traffic. NYTimes.com had about a 25 percent bounce in unique visitors over a normal Sunday.

"The majority of the traffic was to the main story, the photo essays and the video," CBSNews.com's Sims said. "We were well below the kind of traffic records we saw during 9/11, election night and that kind of thing."

The San Francisco Chronicle's online arm, SFGate, doesn't employ a continuous news desk and was caught with no one in the office when the news broke, according to SFGate's news director Vlae Kershner, though they did manage to get a wire package on the site by 5 a.m. Pacific time.

"The story broke at the worst possible time of the week for newspapers, and the timing wasn't great for us, either," Kershner said via e-mail. "Like most news sites, our traffic is lower on weekends, and this story didn't give it much of a bounce in contrast to other recent big stories, such as the [California] recall election and the start of the Iraq war. Maybe everybody was watching TV or out shopping."

For those who were interested in the story, though, the Web provided the depth and analysis usually provided by print newspapers. Bill Powers, media critic for the National Journal, said he was at an airport watching CNN on TV when the news broke, then eventually turned to the Net when he got home.

"On a big breaking story like this, the computer screen becomes for me the equivalent of the old newsroom wire-service machine," Powers said via e-mail. "I don't sit there staring at it the whole time -- that's what the television is for. But I do wander over to the computer every now and then, for a text version of the story. Text -- sentences and paragraphs that I can read for myself, at my own pace -- is still more trustworthy to me than any anchorperson."

Sunday might be a day of rest for some people, but for news junkies, on the day Saddam was snared, the fat Sunday newspaper became an irrelevent paperweight while you could get sound bites on cable TV and interesting angles online.

"In a way, online wire stories are doing what 'extra' editions of newspapers used to do, offering the written version of what you'd previously only heard on the radio or seen on TV," Powers said. "No matter how good the images are -- and those shots of Saddam were breathtaking -- for me, text still has an irreplaceable heft and solidity. And in this case, in the early hours of that first day, the only place to get that heft was online."

Timeline of Saddam Hussein's Capture as It Unfolded on Some Major News Sites
December 14, 2003
[all times U.S. Eastern Standard Time]

5:25 a.m.: CNN.com sends out e-mail alert reading, "U.S. forces capture a number of wanted Iraqis in Tikrit, possibly including former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials say. Identities still being confirmed."

5:30 to 6 a.m.: NYTimes.com posts first news alert to site, with wire story.

5:35 a.m.: CNN.com posts its first story on the possible capture of Hussein; the site has its first video up at 5:52 a.m.

6:30 a.m.: washingtonpost.com had its first non-wire story on the capture up on its site, and Bradley Graham's story from Iraq up by 7:15 a.m.

6:40 a.m.: NYTimes.com posts first staff story on capture, and sends out breaking news alert via e-mail at 6:53 a.m.

7 a.m.: washingtonpost.com had close to its full compliment of editorial staff in the office working on the story.

7:30 a.m.: CBSNews.com has all its site "troops" ready to update the story throughout the day.

8 a.m.: SFGate.com posts package of wire material.

8:30 a.m.: NYTimes.com posts comprehensive package on the story, including interactives by Thom Shanker. The package was enhanced with a multimedia biography of Hussein by Neil MacFarquhar by early morning; extensive video from the AP; audio and an article by John Burns up by early afternoon; and by late evening the "Capturing Hussein" package was up in full, in time for early Monday morning readers.

9 a.m.: CBSNews.com has its photo essay up on the capture. Video archives were up shortly thereafter, and a timeline was up by 10 a.m.

9:15 a.m.: CNN.com posts a behind-the-scenes report from TV correspondent Alphonso Van Marsh, who was embedded with the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division in Iraq. 

3 p.m.: SFGate.com has 10 stories and eight photos online covering the story.

Monday, December 15, 2003

2 a.m. washingtonpost.com posts narrated interactive graphic on the capture.

Sources: CBSNews.com, NYTimes.com, washingtonpost.com, CNN.com, SFGate.com. All times approximate.